2025-12-31_brainforge_sales_cycle_and_metrics_discu_7f55cfd9

Meeting Title: Brainforge Sales Cycle and Metrics Discussion Date: 2025-12-31 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Luke Scorziell

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WEBVTT

1 00:00:04.130 ⇒ 00:00:05.709 Robert Tseng: Hey, Luke, are you there?

2 00:01:21.790 ⇒ 00:01:23.079 Luke Scorziell: Hey, Robert, how’s it going?

3 00:01:23.270 ⇒ 00:01:24.720 Robert Tseng: Hey, Luke’s good, how are you?

4 00:01:25.490 ⇒ 00:01:28.920 Luke Scorziell: Ugh, just, caled down, huh?

5 00:01:29.310 ⇒ 00:01:32.100 Luke Scorziell: Mountains are making a fire at all.

6 00:01:32.100 ⇒ 00:01:33.220 Robert Tseng: Oh, nice!

7 00:01:33.580 ⇒ 00:01:36.140 Luke Scorziell: Pop into my room. Yeah.

8 00:01:36.290 ⇒ 00:01:38.730 Luke Scorziell: It’s a little bit different than life in LA.

9 00:01:39.100 ⇒ 00:01:41.999 Robert Tseng: Yeah, how cold is it up in Arrowhead?

10 00:01:43.170 ⇒ 00:01:48.999 Luke Scorziell: It’s not terrible, I think it’s probably in the… 40s? 40s right now?

11 00:01:49.400 ⇒ 00:01:50.530 Luke Scorziell: Okay. I mean.

12 00:01:50.530 ⇒ 00:01:51.410 Robert Tseng: Is it, is it raining?

13 00:01:51.410 ⇒ 00:01:51.940 Luke Scorziell: R.

14 00:01:52.450 ⇒ 00:01:54.349 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it’s been raining all day.

15 00:01:54.350 ⇒ 00:01:55.100 Robert Tseng: Okay.

16 00:01:55.250 ⇒ 00:01:55.910 Robert Tseng: Wow.

17 00:01:56.970 ⇒ 00:01:59.380 Luke Scorziell: So… But I’m sure it’s worse.

18 00:02:00.280 ⇒ 00:02:01.400 Luke Scorziell: Oh, are you?

19 00:02:01.550 ⇒ 00:02:08.030 Robert Tseng: Oh yeah, it’s like 20… 29 degrees right now. It’s pretty cold. Oh, jeez. Yeah.

20 00:02:08.210 ⇒ 00:02:12.870 Luke Scorziell: It’s terrible. Sweet. Yeah.

21 00:02:12.870 ⇒ 00:02:20.730 Robert Tseng: Well, I saw some of the things you wrote down, so I’d love to just kind of chat through it, and then, I mean, yeah, I won’t hold you for too long either, so…

22 00:02:21.140 ⇒ 00:02:21.850 Luke Scorziell: No, no, you’re fine.

23 00:02:21.850 ⇒ 00:02:22.400 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

24 00:02:22.750 ⇒ 00:02:27.040 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I think… I’m trying to…

25 00:02:27.410 ⇒ 00:02:32.510 Luke Scorziell: balance the tension of, like, there’s probably growth areas that I have between

26 00:02:33.020 ⇒ 00:02:36.079 Luke Scorziell: like, what I know now about Brainforge and the sales cycle, and…

27 00:02:36.250 ⇒ 00:02:42.150 Luke Scorziell: Just the different things that you guys are tracking and want to keep track of versus… Mike.

28 00:02:43.160 ⇒ 00:02:49.190 Luke Scorziell: Maybe… My, like, gut instinct typically is to lean towards, like, simple is better.

29 00:02:49.260 ⇒ 00:02:50.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

30 00:02:50.630 ⇒ 00:02:57.109 Luke Scorziell: So, yeah, I guess maybe, like, question for you is, is that more of a dashboard that you would think of, like.

31 00:02:59.550 ⇒ 00:03:07.079 Luke Scorziell: me, you, AnnuTam going over together, or is that, like, on weekly check-ins with the team? We would go over that?

32 00:03:07.200 ⇒ 00:03:22.630 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, in the weekly section, like, the WBR, like, on the inputs, I would expect the team to kind of… to key those things in. Like, yeah, Jed has, like, his HubSpot or whatever, but I just… I’m kind of tired of seeing things, like, in a bunch of different places. I’d rather just…

33 00:03:22.820 ⇒ 00:03:32.509 Robert Tseng: to me, this is keeping it simple, like, I’d rather them kind of look at the metrics that they should be paying attention to on a weekly basis, and just updating this file weekly.

34 00:03:33.280 ⇒ 00:03:34.040 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

35 00:03:34.040 ⇒ 00:03:41.100 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t really find the HubSpot dashboards very helpful, and I don’t think that we have a lot of the stuff that just gets dropped in Slack.

36 00:03:41.650 ⇒ 00:03:49.080 Robert Tseng: So, I… I mean, maybe I’m just because I’m a finance background person, but I… I like,

37 00:03:49.770 ⇒ 00:03:55.860 Robert Tseng: I like metrics that can… that stay the same, and I can look at it over time. Yeah.

38 00:03:55.860 ⇒ 00:03:56.919 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah.

39 00:03:57.140 ⇒ 00:03:59.799 Luke Scorziell: And I think, cause it’s, as I was, like.

40 00:04:00.900 ⇒ 00:04:03.760 Luke Scorziell: working on it on my end, I kind of came…

41 00:04:04.530 ⇒ 00:04:10.789 Luke Scorziell: It’s like a… almost just rebuilt, I think, but in a slightly different way, or order, yeah.

42 00:04:10.790 ⇒ 00:04:11.240 Robert Tseng: That’s fine.

43 00:04:11.580 ⇒ 00:04:12.230 Robert Tseng: stuff, yeah.

44 00:04:12.230 ⇒ 00:04:18.050 Luke Scorziell: Just, so I think, yeah, I don’t know if, just in my mind, it’s, like, tracking the…

45 00:04:18.240 ⇒ 00:04:20.930 Luke Scorziell: Like, almost, like, right at a glance, how can we look at, like.

46 00:04:21.310 ⇒ 00:04:26.110 Luke Scorziell: Then maybe let’s just say, column, or a couple columns.

47 00:04:26.230 ⇒ 00:04:29.809 Luke Scorziell: In, like, the top corner or something, let’s say, like, how many meetings are we currently doing?

48 00:04:30.100 ⇒ 00:04:34.320 Luke Scorziell: Or just, just the, like, straight funnel metrics of, like, who’s moving through what stages.

49 00:04:36.620 ⇒ 00:04:41.499 Luke Scorziell: But… Yeah, because then I think…

50 00:04:43.300 ⇒ 00:04:45.379 Luke Scorziell: Which is kind of, I guess, what is it?

51 00:04:45.490 ⇒ 00:04:50.849 Luke Scorziell: Is, but the… Yeah, maybe there’s more clarity, too, that I need. Like, between active leads.

52 00:04:51.420 ⇒ 00:04:56.289 Luke Scorziell: I… ActiveLeads, I would assume, is, like, anyone that we’re currently reaching out to in terms of, like, email.

53 00:04:56.780 ⇒ 00:05:06.180 Luke Scorziell: text, call, whatever. And then ICP… what… yeah. So there’s, like, I think ICP conversations, qualified discovery calls.

54 00:05:06.960 ⇒ 00:05:14.030 Luke Scorziell: And then the meetings… Slash leads booked for, kind of, I mean…

55 00:05:14.420 ⇒ 00:05:16.670 Luke Scorziell: Unclear, maybe, exactly what those were?

56 00:05:18.300 ⇒ 00:05:21.090 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, so, like, Active Leads, to me is, like.

57 00:05:21.200 ⇒ 00:05:28.100 Robert Tseng: Well, you know our deal stages in HubSpot, like, once a lead is created, like, that to me is, like, there should be an active…

58 00:05:28.100 ⇒ 00:05:41.560 Robert Tseng: or they’re not necessarily an active lead, but usually when someone is created where they’re considered an active lead, it’s possible that, like, they get disqualified or whatever, like, timings don’t work out. They can move stages immediately, but…

59 00:05:41.680 ⇒ 00:05:53.289 Robert Tseng: to me, like, that’s just like an… like, an all-in number of, like, what are all the leads that we are currently in conversations with within this week? Like, kind of a weekly snapshot.

60 00:05:53.700 ⇒ 00:05:54.670 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

61 00:05:55.000 ⇒ 00:05:59.139 Luke Scorziell: And then, obviously, I want it broken out by… Like, lost, or.

62 00:06:00.290 ⇒ 00:06:03.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Closed one. Yeah. Basically? Yeah. Okay.

63 00:06:04.460 ⇒ 00:06:11.440 Robert Tseng: But I… obviously, I want to break that out by, like, net new leads as well, because that kind of, to me, is… that’s…

64 00:06:11.960 ⇒ 00:06:16.600 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, that’s top of funnel, like, our… how many, like.

65 00:06:17.190 ⇒ 00:06:24.649 Robert Tseng: yeah, how many new people are ending up on that list of leads. Like, I don’t expect all leads to…

66 00:06:24.910 ⇒ 00:06:35.469 Robert Tseng: be actioned, and, like, some may stay active for multiple weeks, which, that’s kind of how it was, but, like, they may not actually be moving every week. So,

67 00:06:37.090 ⇒ 00:06:51.419 Robert Tseng: Yeah, in which case that, like, active lead number could… you know, I don’t expect that to fluctuate so much, but, like, the number of new leads needs to… like, that’s a number that, like, is just, like, an input-output. Like, if we just…

68 00:06:51.910 ⇒ 00:06:55.630 Robert Tseng: do the volume, that number will go up, so…

69 00:06:56.950 ⇒ 00:07:05.540 Robert Tseng: Yeah. ICP conversations, I think it’s… yeah, I mean, it’s kind of a little bit less clear, because we haven’t, like, nailed down, like, what are the…

70 00:07:05.680 ⇒ 00:07:15.240 Robert Tseng: to ICPs that… or whatever that we’re dealing with. I… I don’t really think that needs to be the case, like, I… I kind of feel like,

71 00:07:16.660 ⇒ 00:07:24.169 Robert Tseng: Enterprise and mid-market is fine, like, we can just put a dollar value on, like, what fits into each one of those, and then…

72 00:07:24.170 ⇒ 00:07:24.590 Luke Scorziell: in life.

73 00:07:25.360 ⇒ 00:07:36.820 Robert Tseng: you know, the different types of ICPs that we’re talking to. You know, I know in your doc, like, you wrote, like, okay, you want to capture more leads that are 150K ACV or whatever.

74 00:07:36.820 ⇒ 00:07:56.689 Robert Tseng: I, you know, I frankly don’t think we’re gonna, like, drop… we’re not gonna, like, completely change our go-to-market strategy and only get deals that are $150K plus coming in the door. I think that would… that would significantly slow down, like, our sales pipeline, and the business would die. Like, I just don’t believe that that would happen, so fast. Like…

75 00:07:56.710 ⇒ 00:08:05.789 Robert Tseng: So, to me, it’s always gonna be, like, a portfolio mix of, like, the types of deals that we’re closing right now that are closer to, like, the…

76 00:08:05.790 ⇒ 00:08:17.570 Robert Tseng: 10K a month, 3 months plus kind of type of deal, like, that we need to continue to have, like, a healthy flow… inflow of those. And then the delivery team is kind of responsible for

77 00:08:17.570 ⇒ 00:08:28.420 Robert Tseng: kind of pushing those deals up, and looking for active opportunities, to be able to go and, like, get, like, the one-time, like, kind of projects. There will be…

78 00:08:28.430 ⇒ 00:08:32.569 Robert Tseng: There will be other, like, enterprise-sized deals, which…

79 00:08:32.590 ⇒ 00:08:36.950 Robert Tseng: we’re in an RFP for, like, Port Authority, and we have, like, different…

80 00:08:37.000 ⇒ 00:08:56.979 Robert Tseng: conversations coming in through partners where, yeah, those are, like, enterprise-level clients, and, like, I mean, it’ll just take a while to close, or maybe even, like, the Bible app, for example, like, they have a pretty formal RFP process as well, too. So, like, those, to me, are ICP conversation… enterprise ICP conversations,

81 00:08:57.220 ⇒ 00:09:16.569 Robert Tseng: So, I think that’s, you know, that’s… that’s kind of how I… how I’m thinking about it. But, like, within the enterprise ICP segments, there are probably multiple, like, ICPs for enterprise that we’re, like, we will continue to experiment on those, and that’s just between, kind of, you, me, and UTAP to kind of figure that out.

82 00:09:16.570 ⇒ 00:09:17.360 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

83 00:09:17.360 ⇒ 00:09:17.950 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

84 00:09:18.510 ⇒ 00:09:23.879 Luke Scorziell: Okay, and so, yeah, just to kind of echo that back then is…

85 00:09:24.030 ⇒ 00:09:33.850 Luke Scorziell: Maintaining the current pipeline of mid-market deals that we’re getting to obviously keep the business going, and then potential that those could turn into bigger deals

86 00:09:34.050 ⇒ 00:09:37.219 Luke Scorziell: Maybe, with the delivery team.

87 00:09:37.560 ⇒ 00:09:43.220 Luke Scorziell: Is able, like, finds an opportunity and increases the value, but then… like, not shifting…

88 00:09:43.470 ⇒ 00:09:52.479 Luke Scorziell: So that, yeah, I guess maybe if it’s, like, 30% or so that we’re trying to get enterprise versus, like, 70% that we’re still wanting to get mid-market, or…

89 00:09:52.680 ⇒ 00:09:55.929 Luke Scorziell: I mean… Yeah, I think maybe honing out.

90 00:09:57.620 ⇒ 00:10:01.830 Robert Tseng: Yeah, in the… in the previous, like.

91 00:10:02.440 ⇒ 00:10:08.839 Robert Tseng: doc that I used to share, like, the OKRs doc, like, I used to have, like, a line there that was, like.

92 00:10:09.600 ⇒ 00:10:17.919 Robert Tseng: 40% this, 20% that, 30% whatever. I just felt like that didn’t really, like, the team, like, didn’t know what to do with that, so, like, I didn’t even want to…

93 00:10:17.920 ⇒ 00:10:29.760 Robert Tseng: like, I think it’s good for us to talk about what those splits are, but, like, I don’t really think I would show that number to, like, the rest of the go-to-market team anymore. Like, I just feel like they… I don’t think they really did anything with that information.

94 00:10:29.760 ⇒ 00:10:39.280 Robert Tseng: I feel like it’s just more misleading for them than it is, like, helpful. But yeah, I mean, like, an enterprise deal, they may be, like.

95 00:10:39.560 ⇒ 00:10:46.510 Robert Tseng: they could be 20% of the logos, but be 80% of the revenue, because they’re just that much bigger. So, like, I…

96 00:10:46.510 ⇒ 00:10:46.830 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah.

97 00:10:46.830 ⇒ 00:10:49.239 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think it’s kind of hard to, like.

98 00:10:49.460 ⇒ 00:10:52.820 Robert Tseng: to put a percentage on it. Like, ideally, it’s like…

99 00:10:53.250 ⇒ 00:11:08.899 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, there are reasons why enterprise is better. It’s, longer contracts, bigger contracts, probably more stable, like, yeah, I mean, now that we’ve run small contracts and big contracts, the $100K a month client is…

100 00:11:09.000 ⇒ 00:11:27.309 Robert Tseng: easier to take care of at times than the 5K a month contract. So, I think it’s just kind of, like, you know, I… yeah, I mean, there is, like, kind of a bias that we want more enterprise, but, like, I, you know, I think… I don’t really think we’re in a place where we can put, like, a percentage target on that yet.

101 00:11:27.970 ⇒ 00:11:35.359 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, and I mean, some of this, too, like, would it look like just me, you, and you, Tom, or me and you just sitting down and…

102 00:11:35.520 ⇒ 00:11:39.249 Luke Scorziell: Even coming up with, like, a list of companies that then we want to hand off to, like.

103 00:11:39.580 ⇒ 00:11:43.850 Luke Scorziell: Jed or Jed to do outreach to? I mean, like.

104 00:11:43.850 ⇒ 00:11:45.000 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.

105 00:11:45.000 ⇒ 00:11:47.830 Luke Scorziell: Cause then, like, if it’s just like, hey, here’s…

106 00:11:48.330 ⇒ 00:11:51.339 Luke Scorziell: Like, we come up with 100 companies or something, and here’s…

107 00:11:51.730 ⇒ 00:11:59.460 Luke Scorziell: Like, it doesn’t matter the percentage, but these ones are more enterprise, and these ones are more mid-market. You know, we want you to…

108 00:12:00.050 ⇒ 00:12:02.940 Luke Scorziell: Send messages and connect with, like.

109 00:12:04.190 ⇒ 00:12:09.150 Luke Scorziell: 3 or 4 people related to each, like, target profile.

110 00:12:09.310 ⇒ 00:12:13.760 Luke Scorziell: And then the target profile themselves, like, we can try to get on a meeting or something like that.

111 00:12:14.140 ⇒ 00:12:14.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

112 00:12:14.610 ⇒ 00:12:15.859 Luke Scorziell: Like a… yeah.

113 00:12:15.860 ⇒ 00:12:29.449 Robert Tseng: So, I don’t know if you have the WBR pull up in front of you, but I have it on my screen, I’m just not sharing it. But, like, so let’s say active leads is 20 in that week, and only 2 of them are ICP conversations. Like, right, in that first week, in the scenario that I’ve modeled out.

114 00:12:29.450 ⇒ 00:12:41.660 Robert Tseng: to me, that’s like, okay, only 10% of the… of the… of the active leads are… that we’re… that we’re, like, act… that we’re engaging with are within our ICP. Like, I mean, that’s what it could mean. It could mean a couple other things, but…

115 00:12:41.660 ⇒ 00:12:55.459 Robert Tseng: if we just read it straight up, like, I think that’s what it means. That to me is like, okay, well, that means we have a bunch of other leads that are not in there that are not in our ICP, like, that are not ICP. So, like.

116 00:12:55.650 ⇒ 00:13:01.400 Robert Tseng: The quality of the leads is not great, and that means, like, either…

117 00:13:02.010 ⇒ 00:13:19.349 Robert Tseng: the team is not bringing in the right… they’re not bringing in the right accounts, and so maybe that’s where you and I need to go and, you know, like you said, curate a list and tell them, like, these are the leads you need to go to, and we kind of, like, force the correction that way. Or they’re like, or it’s like.

118 00:13:19.680 ⇒ 00:13:27.339 Robert Tseng: Or… or it could be, like, hey, like, why are they not in our ICP? And, like, we have to go and investigate.

119 00:13:27.640 ⇒ 00:13:45.669 Robert Tseng: of those active leads that we don’t recognize as our current ICP right now, is there another ICP that’s coming out that we’re, like, missing? And, like, that could be a way for us to expand our definition. But, like, those are the types of, like, you know, investigations that I would kind of be thinking of as I see that disparity.

120 00:13:47.650 ⇒ 00:14:03.319 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then if it is like, okay, one is enterprise, one is mid-market, and zero are multi-threaded opportunities, then I’m like, well, that means it’s just like, okay, you’re not talking to enough people within an enterprise ICP, kind of like what I had showed Jed that one time. It was like.

121 00:14:03.320 ⇒ 00:14:16.550 Robert Tseng: It’s just, people are just finding, like, random people. Like, right now, it’s so basic. They’re just literally just finding random people on, like, one person per account, and that’s not how enterprise deals are closed. Like, we need to be talking to, like.

122 00:14:17.040 ⇒ 00:14:26.130 Robert Tseng: I mean, from what… from the deals that I’ve closed. Like, it’s taken, like, 4 or 5 conversations with bigger… with people across a big org.

123 00:14:26.200 ⇒ 00:14:38.040 Robert Tseng: Because the person who’s procuring is different from the operator, who’s different from the sponsor, or whatever, like, there’s all these nuances to, like, enterprise sales that, like, I don’t think our team has any clue about, that, like.

124 00:14:38.040 ⇒ 00:14:54.400 Robert Tseng: you know, that I would be… I would be able to push and be like, hey, for that one enterprise ICP we had, why are they not multi-threaded right now? Like, go find, like, 4 other people within that same ICP to talk to. So that’ll drive up the number of ICP conversations as well. So, I don’t expect

125 00:14:54.860 ⇒ 00:15:06.390 Robert Tseng: conversations to cap out at 20, like, it could be, like, it could go up to 100 for 20 leads. Like, there are probably more than 100 people in those… on those leads. Not saying we should do that for every lead, but, like.

126 00:15:06.390 ⇒ 00:15:19.849 Robert Tseng: Yeah. That to me is, like, the type of conversation that I want to have with the team just by looking at, like, the weekly stats that are showing up that I have not been able to do with the way that I’ve been running the planning meeting so far.

127 00:15:20.280 ⇒ 00:15:23.669 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah, and meaning, so, within that, it’s like, if…

128 00:15:23.830 ⇒ 00:15:31.779 Luke Scorziell: we’re gonna sell into, like, the marketing department, then we could have a few different contexts for ICP conversations within the marketing department versus, like.

129 00:15:32.140 ⇒ 00:15:36.270 Luke Scorziell: We could also have, like, the sales department be a separate thread? Is that… am I getting.

130 00:15:36.270 ⇒ 00:15:36.640 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

131 00:15:36.640 ⇒ 00:15:37.370 Luke Scorziell: what?

132 00:15:37.370 ⇒ 00:15:38.670 Robert Tseng: Yes, yes.

133 00:15:38.960 ⇒ 00:15:47.079 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, I mean, I tried to put notes in all… in the cells to kind of, like, describe a bit more what I… how I define those things, but yeah, ICP conversation to me.

134 00:15:47.110 ⇒ 00:16:00.139 Robert Tseng: it’s not just email, which is the only thing that Jed is looking at right now. He, like, kind of did some stuff in HubSpot, and all he does is track email, which is not enough. Like, we have LinkedIn DMs, we have texts, we have calls, we have emails, so…

135 00:16:00.140 ⇒ 00:16:07.840 Robert Tseng: you know, I don’t really think there’s a clean way to do that right now, we just need to manually be, like, they need to… people just need to be aware of, like, how we’re talking to

136 00:16:07.840 ⇒ 00:16:17.390 Robert Tseng: to people. And then, like, the multi-threaded opportunities is, like, when two-plus stakeholders are engaged. So, maybe we need to, like, break this out more later on, but, like.

137 00:16:17.530 ⇒ 00:16:31.349 Robert Tseng: I just want to make sure that every ICP, we’re talking to multiple people, in that account. Obviously, if we talk to an account, and they’re not a good fit for us, we don’t need to go and talk to another lead.

138 00:16:31.350 ⇒ 00:16:38.289 Robert Tseng: Or maybe the answer is, like, I don’t know if they’re an ICP, and so I need to go and talk to another person to figure that out.

139 00:16:38.290 ⇒ 00:16:50.140 Robert Tseng: Because, yeah, I don’t know, I think sometimes it’s hard to qualify off of the first conversation, but, but yeah, so I think that’s why the multi-threaded opportunities, metric is there, too.

140 00:16:51.000 ⇒ 00:16:53.630 Luke Scorziell: And then, within… because I know we have…

141 00:16:54.120 ⇒ 00:17:01.209 Luke Scorziell: I guess that’s funny, like, the cobbler son has no shoes, maybe, in some ways, but of, even just… so, within us.

142 00:17:01.370 ⇒ 00:17:03.580 Luke Scorziell: or Brainforge, where do we…

143 00:17:04.180 ⇒ 00:17:14.569 Luke Scorziell: like, is it the Notion ICPs? Like, I feel like there are a couple different docs, or have we not, like, entirely… I know it’s kind of something that you and I are planning on working on, but where…

144 00:17:14.900 ⇒ 00:17:22.670 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, there’s just, like, a random… there’s just a few random notions floating around. I think the services page is what I’ve been using most recently.

145 00:17:22.670 ⇒ 00:17:24.050 Robert Tseng: Because that’s

146 00:17:24.150 ⇒ 00:17:35.919 Robert Tseng: I, like, shifted the ICP conversation. First, it was just DMs with me and Utam, and then we put some stuff in Notion. Previous people on the go-to-market side have taken a look at it, but haven’t been very helpful.

147 00:17:35.920 ⇒ 00:17:48.370 Robert Tseng: And then I’ve shifted it over to delivery to try to get the delivery team involved with ICP, but they also don’t get it, so, like, I don’t think this is… this is still, like, a white space for us that we… that I want to…

148 00:17:48.700 ⇒ 00:17:56.699 Robert Tseng: like, codified more. Like, we’ve had conversations about this, but, like, it’s… yeah, it’s… it doesn’t, like, live as a source of truth anywhere.

149 00:17:57.390 ⇒ 00:18:04.099 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, okay, the services page is helpful. And the, like, when you’re saying they didn’t get it, like, what was…

150 00:18:04.390 ⇒ 00:18:07.999 Luke Scorziell: What have people not been getting, or what has been the gap in your mind?

151 00:18:08.220 ⇒ 00:18:17.479 Robert Tseng: I mean, there’s a few videos that you could probably look back on for Platform Brainforge. I think if you look at, like, the delivery…

152 00:18:21.610 ⇒ 00:18:23.240 Robert Tseng: You know, what is it called?

153 00:18:23.500 ⇒ 00:18:30.340 Robert Tseng: Offers… Yeah, the authors and services pitch.

154 00:18:30.450 ⇒ 00:18:49.830 Robert Tseng: like, I created that meeting, which… we’re gonna cut it, I think we’re gonna… we’re gonna reshift it. I created that meeting bi-weekly for, like, the delivery… the senior delivery people to pitch at me, like, what they would do to, like, sell their work to…

155 00:18:49.870 ⇒ 00:18:52.300 Robert Tseng: Our clients, and…

156 00:18:52.300 ⇒ 00:18:52.680 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

157 00:18:52.680 ⇒ 00:19:05.349 Robert Tseng: I think what’s been helpful from those sessions has just been, like, this Figma exercise that I’ve led, where we’re kind of just workshopping, like, customer pain points, and what are the solutions, and how do we map things, and it’s kind of helped them to,

158 00:19:05.720 ⇒ 00:19:23.679 Robert Tseng: look at some things, but generally, like, I just don’t feel like anybody gets, like, how to sell. So, like, I… there’s just… there’s no… no… there’s not been a single good pitch that has come out of that, except for Zoran. Zoran, like, has been helpful, and that’s why I’ve been… I’ve been building an offering around his work. But, like.

159 00:19:23.760 ⇒ 00:19:41.679 Robert Tseng: literally no one else has been able to kind of give me anything coherent that’s, like, yeah, like, I can really use. So, yeah, I think that was just the wrong call. Like, I tried it out for a quarter to see if I could get, our senior delivery people involved on, like, creating targeted offers and

160 00:19:41.680 ⇒ 00:19:50.120 Robert Tseng: defining customer problems to help inform an ICP kind of exercise, and I just… I just don’t think that they’re… they’re there, so…

161 00:19:50.690 ⇒ 00:19:51.430 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

162 00:19:51.430 ⇒ 00:19:52.380 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

163 00:19:53.210 ⇒ 00:19:56.750 Luke Scorziell: Okay, and what, just out of curiosity, what are you building with Zorin?

164 00:19:57.390 ⇒ 00:20:04.529 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so Zoran’s work is… yeah, which I can… I can probably share this with you. So, Zoran, Tom…

165 00:20:11.830 ⇒ 00:20:15.079 Luke Scorziell: Okay, yeah, it’s funny, we’ve gone through so many different cycles.

166 00:20:15.360 ⇒ 00:20:17.230 Luke Scorziell: Of, talking about stuff.

167 00:20:17.910 ⇒ 00:20:21.050 Luke Scorziell: Coming back to this document. I know we talked about it early on, actually.

168 00:20:21.370 ⇒ 00:20:23.410 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah, okay. BuyC stuff.

169 00:20:28.880 ⇒ 00:20:35.050 Robert Tseng: Sample delivery sourced… Scope.

170 00:20:35.750 ⇒ 00:20:37.499 Robert Tseng: So on.

171 00:20:38.010 ⇒ 00:20:40.710 Robert Tseng: So you could take a look at that later, but,

172 00:20:44.720 ⇒ 00:20:49.300 Robert Tseng: Yeah, he just has, like, a… I mean, in short, he’s…

173 00:20:49.400 ⇒ 00:21:06.309 Robert Tseng: he’s, like, a tagging and tracking expert. Like, he… industry average is, like, you can only identify 60-80% of your visitors that come onto your website. Zorong’s solution gets you up to above 95%, which is, like, unheard of.

174 00:21:06.310 ⇒ 00:21:06.750 Luke Scorziell: Oh, wow.

175 00:21:06.750 ⇒ 00:21:14.440 Robert Tseng: in this space. So, he’s, like, world-class at what he does. He already works on two of our clients and has built these solutions.

176 00:21:14.440 ⇒ 00:21:33.609 Robert Tseng: And I frankly think that literally every client we work with could use what he has. So, I want to, like, kind of take his scope and kind of package it into something and kind of bill it at 10 to 20K a month for every client, and I want to go back to them with that as, like, a way to just, like, add on to what we do for them.

177 00:21:33.680 ⇒ 00:21:46.039 Robert Tseng: But yeah, like, to me, like, that’s… he has a pretty narrow skill set, but it’s effective. I’ve seen it be effective for a couple clients, and I think he understands how to, like, measure the impact enough so that

178 00:21:46.040 ⇒ 00:21:55.470 Robert Tseng: you could put together that doc, and, like, I’ve already worked on a couple proposals with him. The offer’s still not landing, and so I think that’s more on me, like, I need to figure out, like.

179 00:21:55.740 ⇒ 00:22:01.799 Robert Tseng: what is the buyer signal that I’m missing? Maybe it’s timing, or maybe they don’t feel the pain enough, because…

180 00:22:02.020 ⇒ 00:22:16.820 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s kind of just, like, you don’t know what you don’t know. So, like, people don’t really know what they could do with a 90… 95% accuracy compared to a 80% accuracy, and, like, I think maybe I need to tell that story a bit better. But, yeah.

181 00:22:16.820 ⇒ 00:22:17.170 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

182 00:22:17.440 ⇒ 00:22:19.859 Robert Tseng: That’s… that’s kind of one example.

183 00:22:22.450 ⇒ 00:22:23.530 Robert Tseng: And…

184 00:22:24.930 ⇒ 00:22:29.340 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, because obviously, as a services company, there’s so many different

185 00:22:29.890 ⇒ 00:22:34.580 Luke Scorziell: Weighs in, and it’s more like problem solving for a consumer.

186 00:22:34.640 ⇒ 00:22:36.020 Robert Tseng: Yep. Versus just…

187 00:22:36.820 ⇒ 00:22:39.229 Luke Scorziell: We have this product that solves this problem.

188 00:22:39.530 ⇒ 00:22:44.539 Luke Scorziell: As much as, like, we have, you know, the brains of people that can solve a lot of problems for you.

189 00:22:45.120 ⇒ 00:23:01.289 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and that’s why our ICP kind of, like, approach is gonna… is more complicated than a product, like, company. We just have too many options, and I think, you know, you and I have to kind of just pick a couple at a time to go and do the…

190 00:23:01.630 ⇒ 00:23:15.040 Robert Tseng: like, to kind of do targeted messaging towards. So, you know, as you get content kind of going again with Ryan, ideally, we just have, like, a sequence for, like, how we, you know, if we pick a certain ICP, like, we follow that awareness framework,

191 00:23:15.170 ⇒ 00:23:32.950 Robert Tseng: you know, the problem, solution, service-aware, and we just kind of have a series for that particular ICP target. We run that. That could be, like, a six-week campaign, you know? And, you know, we’ll take that if it doesn’t work out. Well, I guess we don’t really have anything to benchmark against, but…

192 00:23:32.950 ⇒ 00:23:44.470 Robert Tseng: Then, you know, let the 6 weeks play out, and then if it’s… if it goes well, we can keep doubling down on it, but if not, then we just kind of launch the next one. So that’s kind of how I feel like…

193 00:23:44.630 ⇒ 00:23:51.629 Robert Tseng: you’ll always have, like, something to… to queue up on the content side. Obviously, the first one will probably be the…

194 00:23:51.870 ⇒ 00:24:00.259 Robert Tseng: the most time-consuming one to get going, because we need to just have that sequence in place. But yeah, like, that’s a way that we can test, like.

195 00:24:00.880 ⇒ 00:24:08.940 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, like, 8 different ICPs a quarter, or something like that. Like, I think that would be huge, compared to, like.

196 00:24:09.060 ⇒ 00:24:16.459 Robert Tseng: Kind of the… What we’ve been doing up to this point, which is kind of half-heartedly going after

197 00:24:16.740 ⇒ 00:24:18.479 Robert Tseng: Like, 3 a quarter.

198 00:24:19.230 ⇒ 00:24:19.900 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

199 00:24:19.900 ⇒ 00:24:20.330 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

200 00:24:20.330 ⇒ 00:24:23.680 Luke Scorziell: Well, it’s interesting to me, because…

201 00:24:24.340 ⇒ 00:24:26.659 Luke Scorziell: There’s a lot of different ways that we can measure

202 00:24:27.650 ⇒ 00:24:35.470 Luke Scorziell: ICPs, I guess this is related to the dashboard that… Metrics conversation, but slightly.

203 00:24:35.470 ⇒ 00:24:36.170 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

204 00:24:36.170 ⇒ 00:24:40.300 Luke Scorziell: Different, but, is, obviously, there’s, like, industry.

205 00:24:40.590 ⇒ 00:24:53.989 Luke Scorziell: And then there’s… but then there’s also by department, and then there’s by company size, and then obviously, like, person within. So, from your perspective, seeing more… maybe more of, like, the delivery side of things.

206 00:24:54.110 ⇒ 00:25:00.639 Luke Scorziell: is… Has there been, like, a standout Product or service?

207 00:25:01.000 ⇒ 00:25:02.710 Luke Scorziell: That we’ve been able to do.

208 00:25:02.840 ⇒ 00:25:03.739 Luke Scorziell: Is it, like…

209 00:25:03.850 ⇒ 00:25:11.760 Luke Scorziell: or a type of customer that we like, or, like, the team likes working with, or that seems like it would be the most profitable. I mean, I know we’ve…

210 00:25:12.110 ⇒ 00:25:12.740 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

211 00:25:13.700 ⇒ 00:25:26.790 Robert Tseng: I think, like, department-wise, it is a marketing or sales team, because they’re the closest to revenue. So that gives us the biggest deals. But, like, as far as, like, type of company.

212 00:25:27.090 ⇒ 00:25:32.940 Robert Tseng: you know, I think we’ve talked about, you know, there’s this, like,

213 00:25:33.900 ⇒ 00:25:47.499 Robert Tseng: like, lagging, mid-market, like, I don’t know, 10-plus-year-old, like, either… it could be traditional software, could be a services company, that’s just, like, late to…

214 00:25:47.780 ⇒ 00:26:01.710 Robert Tseng: kind of getting ready for AI. Their data is just a complete mess underneath the hood, and, like, you know, they just… like, they don’t even know where to start. Like, that’s… that’s still, like, a great, like, kind of client for us.

215 00:26:02.300 ⇒ 00:26:04.170 Robert Tseng: I… and then…

216 00:26:05.750 ⇒ 00:26:14.699 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, I think those are still the, you know, the types of clients I want to go after. Like, I’m not looking to go after the cutting edge, like.

217 00:26:15.270 ⇒ 00:26:28.669 Robert Tseng: clients, like, those are the people who our partners will refer us to, but I’m, like, wary that, like, yeah, Q4, we grew a lot, but it wasn’t in our own hands. Like, we kind of just got fed by our partners, which is great, because it…

218 00:26:28.670 ⇒ 00:26:29.080 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

219 00:26:29.080 ⇒ 00:26:42.029 Robert Tseng: took 6 months to… for those partnerships to kind of pay off. But that, to me, is just, like, kind of bonus. That’s, like, not a reflection of our go-to-market strategy. So, yeah, like, the clients that we landed…

220 00:26:42.440 ⇒ 00:27:01.900 Robert Tseng: Yes, they’re kind of all over the place. Like, Lilo Social is, like, some ads agency. We’re basically building straight software for them, and it’s like, okay, we can, like, in the short term, we have enough people on our Rolodex to go staff on those projects, but those are not high-margin projects for us, because they’re not really being run by our team.

221 00:27:01.900 ⇒ 00:27:13.380 Robert Tseng: we’re not developing the in-house expertise for it. It’s kind of a distraction for UTAM, to be honest, like, to be running that type of project. Like, I don’t really feel like I want more Lilo socials, like…

222 00:27:13.620 ⇒ 00:27:17.319 Luke Scorziell: Is that because we’re implementing, like, a partner… a partner’s stuff?

223 00:27:17.690 ⇒ 00:27:33.539 Robert Tseng: Well, we got connected to them… yeah, well, actually, yeah, it was through a partner that recommended it to us. We didn’t actually… we’re not even at a place where we can implement the partner’s tech. We’re straight up building them, like, custom software. We’re, like, building it in Replit and everything, so…

224 00:27:33.540 ⇒ 00:27:41.219 Robert Tseng: it is kind of like what we do, it’s data work, like, there’s reporting stuff, and then they also want, like, some AI, like.

225 00:27:41.530 ⇒ 00:27:58.410 Robert Tseng: kind of chat with your data on top of it, so that’s why we have someone on the data side and on the AI side working on that project. It’s a… we were willing to take it because them being an agency, they’ve already connected us to one of their customers, so, like.

226 00:27:58.470 ⇒ 00:28:02.490 Robert Tseng: There’s… that’s the benefit of working with a client like that, where.

227 00:28:02.490 ⇒ 00:28:03.250 Luke Scorziell: If we…

228 00:28:03.250 ⇒ 00:28:18.139 Robert Tseng: do their job well, like, they’re… they have their own customers who are all brands that we want to actually work with. So, like, strategically, like, we were willing to kind of do that. But I’m not expecting to get, like, that many more of those types of clients,

229 00:28:18.930 ⇒ 00:28:19.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

230 00:28:20.420 ⇒ 00:28:21.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

231 00:28:21.730 ⇒ 00:28:28.099 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah, and then, like, what I said previously about, like, those post-Series A startups, like.

232 00:28:28.200 ⇒ 00:28:33.520 Robert Tseng: the Breezy, Hydra, like, whatever, defaults.

233 00:28:33.810 ⇒ 00:28:42.019 Robert Tseng: read me, like, these are… not… these are not, like, ideal customers to me. Like, they… they’re all, like…

234 00:28:42.650 ⇒ 00:28:49.879 Robert Tseng: venture-backed, and yes, some of them are… you know, default is willing to just, like, roll with us and

235 00:28:50.270 ⇒ 00:28:57.279 Robert Tseng: Pay us, whatever, $2.50 an hour to kind of keep building stuff, like, For them, but, like.

236 00:28:57.520 ⇒ 00:29:05.669 Robert Tseng: to me, that’s a high-risk business. One, like, their revenue is smaller than ours, they’re not gonna give us any more money than that. Oh, but also.

237 00:29:05.670 ⇒ 00:29:23.729 Robert Tseng: If they decide to just go hire someone in-house, they could save a lot of money and do that. So, like, I’m not really, like, I wouldn’t be surprised if 3 months from now, default comes back and tells us, like, hey, we just decided to hire our first founding data engineer, like, we don’t really need you guys anymore. Yeah, like, that to me is not, like, a good…

238 00:29:23.730 ⇒ 00:29:29.859 Robert Tseng: good, those are not great clients for us, because they’re not gonna stick with us very long. So,

239 00:29:30.290 ⇒ 00:29:48.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I mean, we’re still gonna say yes to these types of, like, clients for now, because we kind of just need the revenue to fight against the, you know, 15-20% churn that we experience month to month. But yeah, I think that’s why that ICP conversations kind of segment is so important for us to, like.

240 00:29:48.820 ⇒ 00:30:05.330 Robert Tseng: you know, with between you and I, just, like, having to, you know, spend a good chunk of our time continuing to refine our ICP and making sure that when we’re focusing our… our… our branding and our messaging, we’re trying to go after people that, like.

241 00:30:05.430 ⇒ 00:30:15.729 Robert Tseng: that actually fit who we want to go after, rather than just kind of saying yes to whoever comes in, right? Like, we want to get out of that mode as soon as possible.

242 00:30:16.470 ⇒ 00:30:18.620 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, well, I think, like, on the…

243 00:30:19.650 ⇒ 00:30:25.040 Luke Scorziell: And I, that makes total sense about, like, those post-Series A startups, like, it’s high risk, and then even the…

244 00:30:25.820 ⇒ 00:30:31.340 Luke Scorziell: It’s like… It’s kind of like a… You’re speaking to…

245 00:30:31.930 ⇒ 00:30:39.629 Luke Scorziell: everyone, you’re speaking to no one, and if… if we can identify, like, You know, what is one…

246 00:30:40.670 ⇒ 00:30:42.540 Luke Scorziell: Like, in our ideal world.

247 00:30:43.120 ⇒ 00:30:46.749 Luke Scorziell: And I know Utam kind of talked about this in the conversation that I had with him, but, like.

248 00:30:46.980 ⇒ 00:30:47.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

249 00:30:47.390 ⇒ 00:30:51.990 Luke Scorziell: What is, like, the client that, if we could land this client, like, It would be, like.

250 00:30:52.130 ⇒ 00:30:54.859 Luke Scorziell: Oh my gosh, like, that’s incredible.

251 00:30:54.990 ⇒ 00:31:00.820 Luke Scorziell: And I think then, in my mind, it’s kind of working backwards from that.

252 00:31:00.920 ⇒ 00:31:04.999 Luke Scorziell: Of, you know, what kind of messaging, what kind of brand, what kind of…

253 00:31:05.170 ⇒ 00:31:10.650 Luke Scorziell: Stuff do we want to include to just be able to, like, Speak into that client.

254 00:31:10.820 ⇒ 00:31:16.090 Luke Scorziell: Versus, Like, if…

255 00:31:17.020 ⇒ 00:31:20.179 Luke Scorziell: And I, yeah, I don’t know, you can tell me if you disagree, I think, but then if it’s, like.

256 00:31:20.540 ⇒ 00:31:22.009 Luke Scorziell: If we’re kind of doing that.

257 00:31:22.320 ⇒ 00:31:35.630 Luke Scorziell: Then, at least if we’re, like, shooting towards that, we might kind of miss and hit other, you know, similar companies, or, like, companies that are a little bit off, but, like, over the long term, that’s kind of the direction that we’re moving in, versus if it’s, like.

258 00:31:36.410 ⇒ 00:31:39.929 Luke Scorziell: We’re just kind of trying to cast two out of the net.

259 00:31:40.100 ⇒ 00:31:45.199 Luke Scorziell: So I think maybe that, in my mind, would be, like, if it’s just honing in, like, one…

260 00:31:45.460 ⇒ 00:31:57.160 Luke Scorziell: like, one type of company, one type of department, and one type of service that we want to, like, specifically offer to that department, even. I mean, maybe that’s too specific. And then just, like, running campaigns

261 00:31:57.440 ⇒ 00:32:04.109 Luke Scorziell: Around, around that, and seeing, like… like, for me, even yesterday, I was kind of working out.

262 00:32:04.210 ⇒ 00:32:10.380 Luke Scorziell: like, a dashboard on my end of what would it look like to be kind of, like, insight lead…

263 00:32:10.490 ⇒ 00:32:13.769 Luke Scorziell: As we do the marketing, so, like, you know.

264 00:32:14.180 ⇒ 00:32:16.329 Luke Scorziell: It could be, like, oh, we find that…

265 00:32:17.010 ⇒ 00:32:25.279 Luke Scorziell: And I’m sure that there are already tons of insights that I could pull from the videos that we have, so maybe it’s just a matter of me sitting and continuing to go through.

266 00:32:25.490 ⇒ 00:32:28.450 Robert Tseng: Yeah. The statements of works and stuff, but then if…

267 00:32:28.600 ⇒ 00:32:33.380 Luke Scorziell: You know, if it’s, like, What you had just mentioned with the…

268 00:32:34.230 ⇒ 00:32:37.999 Luke Scorziell: Accuracy of being able to match customer data to a customer profile.

269 00:32:38.120 ⇒ 00:32:47.560 Luke Scorziell: And, like, you know, creating a problem pain point for that, and what size companies are gonna actually experience that pain point the most.

270 00:32:48.560 ⇒ 00:32:51.560 Luke Scorziell: And are they, kind of, identified?

271 00:32:51.760 ⇒ 00:32:55.370 Luke Scorziell: Are they in the range that we want versus… Like, if…

272 00:32:56.620 ⇒ 00:32:59.289 Luke Scorziell: I don’t know, I guess, yeah, I’m kind of thinking on my feet, too, because if it’s, like.

273 00:33:00.020 ⇒ 00:33:03.520 Luke Scorziell: We’re just going after… people that…

274 00:33:05.660 ⇒ 00:33:10.489 Luke Scorziell: Older companies that haven’t really done their best with the data.

275 00:33:11.540 ⇒ 00:33:16.699 Luke Scorziell: Like, do they have the budget to then continue? Like, are they the people that are gonna push into the bigger…

276 00:33:16.910 ⇒ 00:33:18.310 Luke Scorziell: size contracts.

277 00:33:18.700 ⇒ 00:33:23.620 Luke Scorziell: Later on, or are they kind of always going to be at a certain… certain level.

278 00:33:23.950 ⇒ 00:33:48.890 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, so whenever you… I mean, great, you can keep asking these questions. I’m just always going to try to answer them from, like, our existing clients first, because, like, I do think we have a wealth of knowledge from being in business for, what, two and a half years now? So, like, ABC Homes, they’ve been around, 50-year-old company, family business, $200 million a year in revenue. We built an AI solution for them, that’s the first thing, about 5K a month. We’ve restructured the contract, they now, probably.

279 00:33:48.890 ⇒ 00:33:52.810 Robert Tseng: us, probably 10K a month with the volume that we’re doing with them.

280 00:33:52.810 ⇒ 00:33:59.639 Robert Tseng: UTAM in the past couple months, like, kind of from learning what we’ve been doing on the strategy analytics side.

281 00:33:59.640 ⇒ 00:34:15.369 Robert Tseng: he’s gone more and tried to expand scope by pushing into, hey, we can help marketing strategy, hey, we could help with, like, operational efficiency, stuff like that. So yeah, I think marketing strategy picked up some momentum. Their CMO is gonna leave in the next 6 months, so…

282 00:34:15.370 ⇒ 00:34:20.319 Robert Tseng: They’re kind of, like, in a situation where they need, they need, like.

283 00:34:20.630 ⇒ 00:34:33.570 Robert Tseng: they need growth analytics, and so there are a lot of these adjacent services that we’ve already done for other clients that we’re kind of… that we’re kind of… that we’re pitching. We’re not… we’re not even just pitching at them, they’re paying us to pitch at them. That’s like a.

284 00:34:33.570 ⇒ 00:34:33.940 Luke Scorziell: In December.

285 00:34:33.949 ⇒ 00:34:52.099 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I mean, that… that… there’s… there’s, like, probably two new work streams that are emerging there. They’re probably… they’ve probably increased about $20Kamonthatthispoint,andIthinktheycouldeasilygetto,like,a$50K a month client, like… like Eden. Eden, pays us right now. So,

286 00:34:52.099 ⇒ 00:35:08.609 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and, like, I… whether they take on… like, Zoron’s work would be a huge help for them, but there’s also even lower-hanging fruit around there, that’s easier, less technical than… than Zoron’s work that we could do for them and build them for, too. So, that, to me, is an example of, like.

287 00:35:08.849 ⇒ 00:35:11.929 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, they have, like, like, the…

288 00:35:12.019 ⇒ 00:35:20.219 Robert Tseng: data is… like, the data engineering work is never going to be front and center in what we’re selling. Like, we have to sell on outcomes, right? So, like, what you’re saying

289 00:35:20.220 ⇒ 00:35:33.979 Robert Tseng: is right. I think that’s… like, the messaging is never gonna be, like, look at how cool, like, this… we’re selecting this warehouse and these ETL tools, or whatever, like, no one cares about that. Like, that’s just… that’s just gonna be part of the…

290 00:35:33.980 ⇒ 00:35:46.690 Robert Tseng: okay, you want us to get to the outcome? Like, we’re gonna have to do some of this, like, back-end data work, and that’s gonna be kind of just written into the scope of work, and it’s gonna be priced into the proposal. So…

291 00:35:46.690 ⇒ 00:36:05.009 Robert Tseng: we found that that’s… that’s, that’s been a way for us to kind of, kind of price in, like, the core data work that we need to do, but that’s not, like, the sexy stuff that, like, people will… will make a decision on. So, like, yeah, we do have to just be creative with how we’re, like, talking about

292 00:36:05.010 ⇒ 00:36:12.940 Robert Tseng: the value of our work in driving those particular outcomes. So… Yeah, I think, like, we…

293 00:36:13.030 ⇒ 00:36:18.520 Robert Tseng: if we… we don’t even have to, like, cast… like, I’m not even trying… like you said, I’m not trying to cast a wide net, like…

294 00:36:18.870 ⇒ 00:36:34.870 Robert Tseng: from… if we’re trying to just pick a couple ICPs to get going with in Q1, I would start with talking to someone, you know, just really study ABC, understand everything about it, like, that… an ABC type of client, to me, is, like, a… is a… is a… is an ICP we could test.

295 00:36:34.960 ⇒ 00:36:54.400 Robert Tseng: that’s, like, a 20-plus-year-old services business, with a big regional footprint, employees, over 500 people, you know, and then we can, like, make a couple observations about, kind of, their digital presence. You know, at a brand that size, most of their traffic is probably not coming from

296 00:36:54.400 ⇒ 00:36:58.050 Robert Tseng: digital. It’s probably still phone, word of mouth.

297 00:36:58.050 ⇒ 00:37:01.509 Robert Tseng: Direct mail, like, kind of these, like, traditional solutions.

298 00:37:01.970 ⇒ 00:37:02.630 Robert Tseng: And…

299 00:37:03.040 ⇒ 00:37:18.350 Robert Tseng: there is just a lot of opportunity on the digital growth side that, like, you just need to have clean data in order to be able to grow in that way. So, I think that, like, narrative applies to, like, a bunch of companies. Like, I wouldn’t expect the size to be more than

300 00:37:18.690 ⇒ 00:37:30.270 Robert Tseng: you know, we can kind of narrow the size, but, like, it’s, I think, 500 companies, 500… yeah, 500 companies in the nation that are kind of at that size.

301 00:37:30.400 ⇒ 00:37:36.900 Robert Tseng: in services that are close enough that, like, an ABC-style messaging would work?

302 00:37:37.100 ⇒ 00:37:39.190 Robert Tseng: So, like that, To me, is like.

303 00:37:39.340 ⇒ 00:37:57.920 Robert Tseng: one ICP we could work off of, because that’s already directly tied to a client that we’ve had, like, a, you know, 8-month-long relationship with, so we know a lot about them, and we can expand a little bit more beyond home services. Like, I don’t make the pool… there’s other stuff that kind of fits in there.

304 00:37:58.440 ⇒ 00:38:09.699 Robert Tseng: But then, another ICP to me is, like, I want to get Bible app, right? And, like, they’re a 200 million, daily active users, kind of.

305 00:38:10.300 ⇒ 00:38:13.540 Robert Tseng: That, like, kind of business that…

306 00:38:13.820 ⇒ 00:38:25.060 Robert Tseng: you know, has… that has, like, total, like, 1 billion users. So, they are trying to continue to, activate more of their users, and so…

307 00:38:25.110 ⇒ 00:38:42.450 Robert Tseng: You know, they want to go from 20% to 25% of engaged users. They’re trying to think about the last time I spoke with their product person, yeah, he’s worried about, like, the AI kind of, like, contents. You know, there’s more and more, like, faith-based apps that are just spewing out AI-generated stuff.

308 00:38:42.550 ⇒ 00:38:52.660 Robert Tseng: And, like, something they’re doing is, like, they need a way how to… they need to know how to score their publishers, how to, like, prioritize

309 00:38:52.660 ⇒ 00:39:11.529 Robert Tseng: which publishers to go after? Should they be going after churches? Should they be going after, like, Christian influencers? Should they be going after whatever? So… and it’s like, I kind of heard a couple of the bigger problems that they’re dealing with, and there’s a formal RFP process that we should pitch on, but to me, that’s also another content series that’s, like.

310 00:39:11.530 ⇒ 00:39:21.039 Robert Tseng: Hey, if you’re a, you know, an app with hundreds of tens of millions of users, and, you know, you’re worried because there are some alarming trends of.

311 00:39:21.370 ⇒ 00:39:38.590 Robert Tseng: you know, all these, like, AI copies kind of, like, popping up, AI content-generated kind of copies popping up that are eating away at your active users, people are spending less time in your app. Like, there are… these are, like, the things that you need to do in order to keep users engaged with your platform.

312 00:39:38.590 ⇒ 00:39:42.390 Robert Tseng: And, like, we could do a whole series around that, because we’ve worked with

313 00:39:42.420 ⇒ 00:39:56.919 Robert Tseng: enough app companies and, like, kind of… I mean, I think between Rutoma and I, we probably have enough to say, on that, and that could be just, like, a way to kind of push content that’s relevant to, like,

314 00:39:57.350 ⇒ 00:40:04.049 Robert Tseng: like, I can… I can reshare our content around that to the head of product at BibleApp, or to other, kind of.

315 00:40:04.310 ⇒ 00:40:09.580 Robert Tseng: you know, if we wanted to be really specific and kind of do it for, like, faith-based apps, like, I’d love to go and

316 00:40:09.590 ⇒ 00:40:25.279 Robert Tseng: talk to Overflow, like, it’s a tithing app platform, or, like, Planning Center, like, there’s other, like, you know, Christian software tech companies that, like, I feel like would… that we could reach in that segment, too. So, I mean, I guess that’s…

317 00:40:25.390 ⇒ 00:40:31.349 Robert Tseng: that is just kind of me riffing on, like, two types of ICPs that, like, I feel like we just kind of picked

318 00:40:31.710 ⇒ 00:40:41.439 Robert Tseng: a single account, and then we just kind of expanded that into… we were… into a type of ICP that we could go after.

319 00:40:41.880 ⇒ 00:40:46.789 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess the last thing I’ll say, because you were saying, like, the ICP could be…

320 00:40:46.790 ⇒ 00:41:03.300 Robert Tseng: like, the buyer, could be the team, could be the… yeah, I guess what I mean by ICP in this doc is really just, like, at the account level. So, I do believe that at pretty much any organization of a certain revenue size, or personnel size.

321 00:41:03.370 ⇒ 00:41:09.850 Robert Tseng: We could probably do some good work as a partner to their marketing or revenue team.

322 00:41:10.230 ⇒ 00:41:25.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah, because chances are, their data situation is not good, and yeah, I guess we just have to pick the one who’s feeling the pain the most. And, sometimes it’s finance, sometimes it’s operations, but…

323 00:41:25.490 ⇒ 00:41:31.149 Robert Tseng: It’s probably better if we’re… if we’re speaking to, like, a revenue,

324 00:41:31.780 ⇒ 00:41:40.280 Robert Tseng: facing team, like a sales or a marketing team, because I just… those are the buyers that are actively on social media anyway.

325 00:41:40.280 ⇒ 00:41:56.759 Robert Tseng: Like, I don’t think finance people are looking at LinkedIn, like, the only finance projects we’ve gotten have been through referrals, and, like, I think that’s just because it’s like, hey, I knew a guy who worked at a bank who worked on due diligence for this project, and it’s very much that type of

326 00:41:56.760 ⇒ 00:42:09.930 Robert Tseng: kind of, like, handshake relationship still. So yeah, as far as, like, a content, you know, strategy perspective, it probably makes more sense to still be going after, like, you know, sales and marketing people on LinkedIn.

327 00:42:10.890 ⇒ 00:42:17.390 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, and presumably, if it ends up, like, ABC, then we could… I guess,

328 00:42:18.610 ⇒ 00:42:24.750 Luke Scorziell: have the referrals within the same company to, like, oh, hey, you know, we also do operational

329 00:42:25.310 ⇒ 00:42:30.959 Luke Scorziell: data and whatnot. I think, one thought I have, too, before, you know, I lose it is…

330 00:42:31.330 ⇒ 00:42:35.650 Luke Scorziell: Obviously, I can watch a lot of the videos, and I’ve been trying to, like, dig around to see…

331 00:42:37.430 ⇒ 00:42:42.189 Luke Scorziell: like, some of the meetings with actual clients and stuff, but it might… I don’t know if, like, it’d be…

332 00:42:42.870 ⇒ 00:42:47.869 Luke Scorziell: like, even if I could just sit in on, like, a few… Like, of the…

333 00:42:48.160 ⇒ 00:42:52.560 Luke Scorziell: team, like, the delivery team, I guess, or, like, the AI, or data, or whoever, like.

334 00:42:53.210 ⇒ 00:42:56.349 Luke Scorziell: on some of those meetings, I think it would be helpful just to hear, like.

335 00:42:57.030 ⇒ 00:43:00.389 Luke Scorziell: How they go through the process of things, what their…

336 00:43:00.970 ⇒ 00:43:10.200 Luke Scorziell: actually doing, because, like, I was just… I was on ChatGBT, like, what is a dbt, and how does Snowflake work, and why are these things important? And so, for me, I’m just still figuring out, like, the…

337 00:43:10.200 ⇒ 00:43:12.090 Robert Tseng: Yeah. The value of.

338 00:43:12.820 ⇒ 00:43:18.870 Luke Scorziell: And… because they’re kind of complex, a little bit… Obscure things that, like.

339 00:43:19.220 ⇒ 00:43:27.069 Luke Scorziell: You know, you wouldn’t match necessarily immediately until… or, like, with a real-world outcome until you’ve…

340 00:43:27.190 ⇒ 00:43:31.599 Luke Scorziell: like, maybe been educated on it, so I think, like, that’ll probably help me a lot, too, with the marketing.

341 00:43:31.600 ⇒ 00:43:32.160 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

342 00:43:32.160 ⇒ 00:43:35.879 Luke Scorziell: strategy, just because it’s like, right now, I can generically be like.

343 00:43:36.560 ⇒ 00:43:39.830 Luke Scorziell: You know, we’ll take all the information that you have.

344 00:43:40.220 ⇒ 00:43:43.940 Luke Scorziell: And make it more organized, and help you to make better decisions on it, but…

345 00:43:43.940 ⇒ 00:43:44.370 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

346 00:43:44.990 ⇒ 00:43:50.440 Luke Scorziell: I think, just even in learning, like, a lot of what we…

347 00:43:52.320 ⇒ 00:43:57.040 Luke Scorziell: talked about, or as I was, like, sorting through some of those videos today, it was, like.

348 00:43:57.360 ⇒ 00:44:01.359 Luke Scorziell: It’s really, like, how confident are you in the data that you have, and that you’re actually…

349 00:44:01.500 ⇒ 00:44:04.150 Luke Scorziell: Getting the most out of it and making the right decisions.

350 00:44:04.360 ⇒ 00:44:04.870 Luke Scorziell: And…

351 00:44:04.870 ⇒ 00:44:05.380 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

352 00:44:05.740 ⇒ 00:44:10.830 Luke Scorziell: So… Okay, yeah, I think this is really helpful.

353 00:44:15.970 ⇒ 00:44:19.380 Luke Scorziell: So yeah, so, like, the big home services companies.

354 00:44:19.630 ⇒ 00:44:23.670 Luke Scorziell: Or 20-year-old plus, maybe not necessarily home services, but just…

355 00:44:23.800 ⇒ 00:44:28.280 Luke Scorziell: Services businesses who are still kind of operating on the old… old way of doing things.

356 00:44:28.440 ⇒ 00:44:29.889 Luke Scorziell: And then apps.

357 00:44:30.110 ⇒ 00:44:33.359 Luke Scorziell: And then, I mean, are we just thinking, like.

358 00:44:33.480 ⇒ 00:44:45.960 Luke Scorziell: spewing out content through you and who Tom’s accounts, and then just, like, one post could be about, like, ABC, and the next post is about, like, Bible app, and then… and we’re kind of honing in on, like.

359 00:44:46.150 ⇒ 00:44:50.220 Luke Scorziell: What we’re doing with those different things, or as we’re thinking about a content strategy, like.

360 00:44:51.970 ⇒ 00:44:58.890 Luke Scorziell: I mean, there are different ways, I guess, that we could organize I mean, I never answered.

361 00:44:58.890 ⇒ 00:45:06.640 Robert Tseng: I probably wouldn’t even name-drop those accounts, like, I would probably just kind of do it… like, yeah, the framework that Ryan had put together, like.

362 00:45:06.800 ⇒ 00:45:26.659 Robert Tseng: kind of the problem-solution-service, where, like, kind of just thinking about what’s a series of content that’ll, like, kind of cycle through each of those things. I don’t think we have to go in order where we do, like, 5 posts of problems, 5 posts of solutions, 5 services, maybe it’s more of a mix. But yeah, I think we should have templates for, like.

363 00:45:26.930 ⇒ 00:45:46.719 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and, like, we have a lot of… we’ve bookmarked a lot of, like, kind of good kind of content examples, but I think, yeah, that to me is, like, kind of how we should… you should approach, like, the content strategy side of, like, okay, if you’re going to try to speak to somebody that’s like an ABC,

364 00:45:47.380 ⇒ 00:45:53.430 Robert Tseng: You know, what are the problems? What are, like, the 3-5 problems that, like, we…

365 00:45:53.670 ⇒ 00:45:59.119 Robert Tseng: can just call out on social media and kind of bring awareness to.

366 00:45:59.620 ⇒ 00:46:10.129 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah, like, there’s… there’s gonna, you know, that’s at least… or maybe 5 is too aggressive. Let me just say 3, like, 1 to 3. You know, we don’t need to overcomplicate it. And, yeah, we’re just kind of…

367 00:46:10.320 ⇒ 00:46:16.329 Robert Tseng: Creating a series where we can post something kind of, like, at least twice a week over…

368 00:46:16.330 ⇒ 00:46:31.419 Robert Tseng: you know, we could do up to three, three to five times a week, but, like, ideally to… at least two, two times a week, kind of going through, like, this… kind of rolling out the entire series. Like, if we roll out the whole problem statement and nobody comments or engages on the problem.

369 00:46:31.520 ⇒ 00:46:41.349 Robert Tseng: then we’re… we either don’t have the right audience, or we’re not talking about the right problem. And so we can just cut that and move on to the next… move on to the next one.

370 00:46:41.430 ⇒ 00:46:53.169 Robert Tseng: and then… but, like, yeah, if the problem, we’re getting some good engagement, like, trying to… you’re… and, like, kind of… you’re kind of helping the team figure out, like, what are the, you know… I mean, the structure may or may not already be there, but, like.

371 00:46:53.980 ⇒ 00:46:58.500 Robert Tseng: Yeah, just kind of figuring out, like, how do we get the right content in front of

372 00:46:58.540 ⇒ 00:47:10.839 Robert Tseng: people. If there’s good engagement, then we can move into the solution section, where we talk about, here are, like, some of the ways that we’ve already been solutioning against these problems, and we can use examples from our… from the client work that we do.

373 00:47:10.870 ⇒ 00:47:15.840 Robert Tseng: Some clients let us name drop, some don’t, so we can kind of just decide what that is there.

374 00:47:15.850 ⇒ 00:47:23.160 Robert Tseng: And then the service awareness piece is more kind of just, like, these are all the tools that we use, like, this is, like, the distribution point. It’s like, okay.

375 00:47:23.160 ⇒ 00:47:40.480 Robert Tseng: let’s go into the nitty-gritty, we’ll do, like, a demo or a walkthrough of, like, the solution that we’ve built specifically for ABC. We use, and we tagged this tool, this tool, this tool, this tool, and bam, like, this is, like, the customer service agent that processes, like, 10,000 requests a month kind of thing. Like, I’m happy to kind of just, like.

376 00:47:40.520 ⇒ 00:47:42.639 Robert Tseng: Share that kind of stuff into the world.

377 00:47:43.170 ⇒ 00:47:43.809 Robert Tseng: That’s a neat.

378 00:47:44.130 ⇒ 00:47:58.479 Robert Tseng: a great, like, series that, like, you know, if… I think would… would probably, like, I mean, we haven’t… we’ve never done anything that formal yet, but, like, I… I think, you know, that’s… that’s what I…

379 00:47:58.600 ⇒ 00:48:02.399 Robert Tseng: That’s what I’m hoping to see from our content when we relaunch it.

380 00:48:03.310 ⇒ 00:48:06.910 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, well, it’d be interesting if we take, like, and I… I think

381 00:48:07.180 ⇒ 00:48:10.630 Luke Scorziell: what I was writing out is similar to what you were saying, but if we take, like.

382 00:48:11.180 ⇒ 00:48:19.289 Luke Scorziell: ICP1, ICP2, and then ICP1 has, like, yeah, 3 to 5 problems. We try to do a post for…

383 00:48:19.710 ⇒ 00:48:28.210 Luke Scorziell: I don’t know, one, each of those problems or something, and then within that post, there’s, like, we talk about the different solutions, then maybe we have its own solution point.

384 00:48:29.070 ⇒ 00:48:33.689 Luke Scorziell: And then maybe we have, like, a services post as well, so then, you know, that’s a way of, like.

385 00:48:34.320 ⇒ 00:48:49.609 Luke Scorziell: we’re going through different problem sets that we think the ICP would have, based on what we know about our current clients. Yeah. And then… and then we can test that out with different ICPs. So that would be easy for me to make, like, a spreadsheet for, too, to kind of organize, like.

386 00:48:51.820 ⇒ 00:48:56.549 Luke Scorziell: Just, yeah, just get a content strategy, like, Started, and

387 00:48:57.280 ⇒ 00:49:01.240 Luke Scorziell: And going, so then we can start, like, brainstorming, like, what can these posts be?

388 00:49:01.350 ⇒ 00:49:07.390 Luke Scorziell: And what are some of the key problems and solutions that we want to talk about? So…

389 00:49:07.700 ⇒ 00:49:08.360 Robert Tseng: Yes.

390 00:49:08.620 ⇒ 00:49:17.409 Luke Scorziell: And then has it typically worked where it’s, like, we come up with the outline or something, and then we give it to Ryan, he puts it through, like, the different prompts and stuff that he has, or, I mean, is it, like.

391 00:49:18.340 ⇒ 00:49:18.860 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

392 00:49:18.860 ⇒ 00:49:19.419 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean…

393 00:49:19.420 ⇒ 00:49:20.490 Luke Scorziell: We’re still getting clarity on…

394 00:49:20.490 ⇒ 00:49:35.910 Robert Tseng: the outline would be helpful, could be helpful, but, like, yeah, I mean, a lot of the time it’s just been, like, a… like a word dump from us, and then he just kind of takes it, and he… he spits something back. I… yeah, I think the quality has not been that high, like, I… like, I think…

395 00:49:36.660 ⇒ 00:49:43.299 Robert Tseng: Utam says it’s 80% of the way there, but I’m like, I don’t really know if it’s even that, like… like I said, when he gives me a piece…

396 00:49:43.510 ⇒ 00:49:54.960 Robert Tseng: when it gives me something, it’s helpful that it’s not white space, it’s not starting from scratch, but it still takes me, like, 15 to 20 minutes to edit everything in order to get it to a place where I feel comfortable to post it.

397 00:49:55.110 ⇒ 00:50:12.149 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, I mean, that’s… that’s kind of just where it is right now, but, like, yeah, he doesn’t really need that much for him to… to get it going. Like, yeah, like, just… I would leverage him to just kind of iterate on different examples. Like, yeah, his entire time should be dedicated to content and supporting that now, so…

398 00:50:12.150 ⇒ 00:50:16.969 Robert Tseng: His SEO stuff, like, I will wind down as soon as the content starts to pick up.

399 00:50:18.170 ⇒ 00:50:20.450 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, okay, so, yeah, SEO’s not.

400 00:50:20.450 ⇒ 00:50:20.769 Robert Tseng: So yeah.

401 00:50:21.250 ⇒ 00:50:34.850 Robert Tseng: form, like, LinkedIn content would be good. I mean, I still plan to post more personally, like, personal stuff, and, like, kind of do my own content to kind of test different samples as well, so it won’t just be kind of you guys working on it.

402 00:50:35.290 ⇒ 00:50:48.370 Robert Tseng: But then, yeah, you know, I guess, like, in the high-intent actions, we had newsletter sign-ups, lead magnet downloads, like, you know, there’s other formats that we want to include as well, like, it’s not just going to be text posts,

403 00:50:48.370 ⇒ 00:50:57.499 Robert Tseng: This is where you can leverage the design team if you want, like, carousels for, like, a graphic. And then if you’re trying to do landing, like, links to landing pages, like…

404 00:50:57.500 ⇒ 00:51:08.700 Robert Tseng: because you want to do, like, a freebie drop or something, like, you know, I kind of leave it up to you to, try to decide, like, where… where you want to kind of beef up a post more, like…

405 00:51:09.530 ⇒ 00:51:14.419 Luke Scorziell: You know, to me, it’s like, hey, if we get, like, some engagement on a pure content post.

406 00:51:14.560 ⇒ 00:51:29.450 Robert Tseng: then we should just run it back again. Reschedule it, do a different iteration, kind of, like, one or two weeks down the line, but, like, add something additional to it. It’s like, hey, the same thing we talked about before, here’s like a, like, yeah, test the lead magnet download, or, like.

407 00:51:29.450 ⇒ 00:51:49.189 Robert Tseng: you know, if we had multiple consecutive good posts and that, then maybe that just means we should do a sign-up. So, you know, try to use, like, the low-effort kind of, like, content pieces as, like, an early signal for whether or not you want to invest into, like, like, actually doing a higher intent, kind of thing on

408 00:51:49.320 ⇒ 00:51:58.749 Robert Tseng: having us build the freebie, or if you want to launch the webinar, or whatever it is, like, we can… we can… we can… if we have good signal from the content, we can… we can definitely do that.

409 00:51:59.860 ⇒ 00:52:01.070 Luke Scorziell: Okay.

410 00:52:01.070 ⇒ 00:52:01.660 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

411 00:52:02.540 ⇒ 00:52:08.649 Luke Scorziell: Sweet. I think that’s… Yeah, this gives me a lot to go on.

412 00:52:09.860 ⇒ 00:52:14.330 Luke Scorziell: Because I think that more, and maybe as we’re just experimenting with testing.

413 00:52:14.860 ⇒ 00:52:26.829 Luke Scorziell: which problems are resonating the most. You know, I guess it’s, like, the insights that I was thinking about, is, like, what are the insights that we can glean from customers that we currently have, and how can we start testing them in content, to see what’s delivering?

414 00:52:26.940 ⇒ 00:52:33.810 Luke Scorziell: And then, from there, too, if we have, like, a certain post or a certain set of posts that are really performing well.

415 00:52:34.140 ⇒ 00:52:39.830 Luke Scorziell: you know, then at that point, it’s like, we could put paid ads behind it, too, on LinkedIn.

416 00:52:40.030 ⇒ 00:52:41.010 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

417 00:52:41.820 ⇒ 00:52:45.400 Luke Scorziell: So… okay, yeah, I think that gives me a lot more clarity on the…

418 00:52:45.850 ⇒ 00:52:50.110 Luke Scorziell: the, the content side, because I know that’s been something that we want to get up.

419 00:52:50.260 ⇒ 00:52:51.090 Luke Scorziell: Pretty quickly here.

420 00:52:51.090 ⇒ 00:52:51.630 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

421 00:52:53.020 ⇒ 00:52:56.250 Luke Scorziell: Okay.

422 00:52:56.250 ⇒ 00:53:14.679 Robert Tseng: And then, like, I know you have some questions around Jed. I’ll kind of postpone that for now, like, as far as, like, kind of where I want his time spent, I probably need another day to think about it. Yeah, I still think it’s gonna be Ryan on all things content and, like, engagement on content, I think he can do that. And then Jed, in terms of, like, doing…

423 00:53:14.760 ⇒ 00:53:26.539 Robert Tseng: follow-up campaigns, middle of funnels, like, kind of manual messages, like, I think that’s where I’m gonna want him to be, and if he’s not effective there, then he doesn’t… then that’s it. We probably will cut him.

424 00:53:27.270 ⇒ 00:53:30.050 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that’s kind of what it looks like.

425 00:53:30.080 ⇒ 00:53:48.850 Robert Tseng: this MRR forecast, I don’t know if you fully understood it, but, like, yeah, the time discounted expected revenue, I may rename that again, but, like, that to me is, like, how I’m basically trying to create, like, a present value estimate of, like, the revenue that the go-to-market team is generating on a weekly basis. So.

426 00:53:48.850 ⇒ 00:53:55.419 Robert Tseng: To me, that has to, like, kind of match the cost of the personnel, obviously, so…

427 00:53:55.420 ⇒ 00:53:59.030 Robert Tseng: It’s like, yeah, like, I think… That’s…

428 00:53:59.950 ⇒ 00:54:16.759 Robert Tseng: I mean, that’s… this is… this is something I want to be using more. Like, I’ve been… I’ve been wanting to build something like this for the longest time, but I’m gonna… I mean, it probably needs to be pressure tested. I’m having a few people look at it to kind of see if this actually holds… holds true. But yeah, I guess that’s kind of what I’m…

429 00:54:16.760 ⇒ 00:54:20.699 Luke Scorziell: And what is the funnel velocity index measure? Like.

430 00:54:21.750 ⇒ 00:54:34.749 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this one is more kind of just median days. This is, like, days from lead to close one, and the close rate percentage, so I guess you’re in that dock right now, but let’s say, median days increases to 50, the velocity drops.

431 00:54:34.750 ⇒ 00:54:48.180 Robert Tseng: Or, like, let’s say our close rate increases, that index changes. So, I’m just trying to, like, create, like, a single metric that kind of ties days and close rate together. So, I don’t really know what I will do with that,

432 00:54:48.180 ⇒ 00:55:02.600 Robert Tseng: with that index yet, but, like, because I don’t know what a… an index is not helpful if you don’t have a benchmark, so I don’t really know, like, you know, I’m just gonna assume 30 days, 10% close rate. I think I’m just gonna say the benchmark for our funnel velocity right now is 0.3.

433 00:55:02.700 ⇒ 00:55:11.789 Robert Tseng: So, like, if I were to turn this into a target, you know, let’s say a month from now, and if we’re able to speed up, like, our…

434 00:55:12.320 ⇒ 00:55:20.560 Robert Tseng: Or a lead to close 1 to, like, 20, which… that seems kind of unlikely to me, but that, you know, maybe it’s possible. And we increased the close rate.

435 00:55:21.140 ⇒ 00:55:27.709 Robert Tseng: Well, actually, that’d be great. Like, if our funnel velocity index is 1, that to me is, like, that’s a great number. Like,

436 00:55:28.150 ⇒ 00:55:37.060 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, kind of, to me, I’d be looking more for, like, anything… like, I’d be looking to measure this over time and see if it kind of stays above 0.3 or not.

437 00:55:38.340 ⇒ 00:55:40.179 Luke Scorziell: Okay, meaning… so this is, like…

438 00:55:40.830 ⇒ 00:55:45.629 Luke Scorziell: How much time is it taking us to close the deal, and then how many… out of the deals…

439 00:55:46.460 ⇒ 00:55:47.889 Luke Scorziell: So if it takes us longer to…

440 00:55:47.890 ⇒ 00:55:54.100 Robert Tseng: the deal, against, like, our close… against our close rate. Like, close rate is really me and Utam, like…

441 00:55:54.690 ⇒ 00:55:55.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

442 00:55:56.160 ⇒ 00:56:11.270 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I… I mean, our close rate after the meeting is booked is, like, 60-80%, but, like, just kind of something from, like, that’s, like, pipeline close rate from… from, like, lead to… to close one, like, I… I think that’s… that’s what that 10% is trying to capture.

443 00:56:11.270 ⇒ 00:56:19.190 Luke Scorziell: So the lever that we would have as a go-to-market team is getting better leads that always are, like, are more likely to close… are more likely to get engaged.

444 00:56:19.190 ⇒ 00:56:35.689 Robert Tseng: will… yeah, higher quality leads will increase the close rate, and if we are kind of operationally getting better at kind of pushing kind of messages out, which we have not, it’s been very much ad hoc, where I’m just like, hey, Jed, send this message to this person, like.

445 00:56:36.390 ⇒ 00:56:43.960 Robert Tseng: yeah, I think the… the team would want to… would want to try to shorten the… the days… days from lead to close one as well.

446 00:56:44.750 ⇒ 00:56:48.750 Luke Scorziell: Which… and on the sequencing side of that, I mean, it’s basically, like.

447 00:56:50.300 ⇒ 00:56:52.780 Luke Scorziell: When someone moves from being,

448 00:56:52.980 ⇒ 00:56:59.630 Luke Scorziell: From one stage to the next, they should get added to some kind of sequence that sends them emails until they get updated until the next stage, right?

449 00:56:59.630 ⇒ 00:57:13.990 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s not always gonna be that automated, but yeah, sure, if it’s like, hey, we booked a meeting with a lead, and that meeting keeps getting rescheduled, or, like, we just… just making sure we have, like, the table stakes of, like, hey, did the meeting get…

450 00:57:14.070 ⇒ 00:57:33.130 Robert Tseng: if the meeting got booked, send them a reminder, have them confirm the meeting. If it got rescheduled, reschedule them for, like, within the same week, or, you know, as soon as possible. Or then after the meeting, if it’s, like, after the meeting, we need to get the proposal out within 24 hours or 48 hours, which I think we kind of do, like, 48 hours right now.

451 00:57:33.250 ⇒ 00:57:47.679 Robert Tseng: And then after the proposal is sent, it’s doing those continual follow-ups of, like, hey, do you have any questions about the proposal? Do we need to jump on another call to kind of change things up? Like, yeah, that’s pretty much it. Like, that’s… those are the only ways that we can really impact, days from lead to close wrong.

452 00:57:48.460 ⇒ 00:57:51.150 Luke Scorziell: And is that stuff that HubSpot has the capability of doing?

453 00:57:51.320 ⇒ 00:57:52.519 Robert Tseng: Yeah, HubSpot can do that.

454 00:57:53.550 ⇒ 00:57:56.800 Luke Scorziell: And we… okay, and we just haven’t necessarily super built it out yet.

455 00:57:57.060 ⇒ 00:58:04.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, yeah, I think it’s, like I said, it’s just been kind of an ad hoc, like, when I notice that things have been sitting

456 00:58:05.390 ⇒ 00:58:12.219 Robert Tseng: in the pipeline for too long, I’m calling them out. But I would want the team to kind of push that more proactively.

457 00:58:13.070 ⇒ 00:58:16.919 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I mean, that seems super high leverage to just come up with a sequence that we can send to people who are

458 00:58:17.900 ⇒ 00:58:20.039 Luke Scorziell: And the stage for each.

459 00:58:20.550 ⇒ 00:58:40.289 Robert Tseng: Yeah. But for me, like, it’s not, like, worth your time right now until, like, our funnel is full again. So, because otherwise, like, there’s not, frankly, just not that many that are going through this. We… we can, like, I think the ad hoc is fine. But once we fill the funnel again, then we will need that system, because there’ll be too many for the team to keep up with. Yeah.

460 00:58:40.940 ⇒ 00:58:42.140 Luke Scorziell: Yeah. Yeah.

461 00:58:46.250 ⇒ 00:58:51.740 Luke Scorziell: Okay, I don’t know if I got another… Oh, with the…

462 00:58:54.300 ⇒ 00:59:00.869 Luke Scorziell: I mean, it’d be interesting with the time discounted expected revenue, because this is kind of, like, very similar to return on ad spend.

463 00:59:00.870 ⇒ 00:59:01.570 Robert Tseng: Yes, yeah, yeah.

464 00:59:01.570 ⇒ 00:59:03.199 Luke Scorziell: Return on go-to-marketing spend.

465 00:59:03.370 ⇒ 00:59:06.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So if we also had an index that was, like.

466 00:59:06.570 ⇒ 00:59:10.919 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, this… Or wait, is it? It would be a return over.

467 00:59:12.180 ⇒ 00:59:15.240 Robert Tseng: That’s what the 69% is, below. Yeah.

468 00:59:15.240 ⇒ 00:59:16.540 Luke Scorziell: Oh, -oh. Okay.

469 00:59:19.200 ⇒ 00:59:20.480 Robert Tseng: Go mark our revenue.

470 00:59:20.620 ⇒ 00:59:21.720 Luke Scorziell: That’s cost efficiency.

471 00:59:21.980 ⇒ 00:59:24.119 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I could rename it, but, like.

472 00:59:24.440 ⇒ 00:59:28.009 Luke Scorziell: So we’d want that to… I mean, that should also be above 1, right? Or no?

473 00:59:28.380 ⇒ 00:59:29.780 Robert Tseng: Ideally, yeah.

474 00:59:29.780 ⇒ 00:59:31.369 Luke Scorziell: One would mean that it’s…

475 00:59:34.400 ⇒ 00:59:44.349 Robert Tseng: Yeah, but I guess in this scenario, I guess what I was trying to communicate in the video was, like, hey, look, so we have a… you know, when I’m talking about budgeting for you, sure, I gave you, like, a flat number in terms of, like, okay.

476 00:59:44.420 ⇒ 01:00:02.979 Robert Tseng: Luke, you have $20,000amonthtogoin,like,kindof,foryourteam.Yeah,youcandecidewhatyouwanttodowiththat.Buttome,itshouldreallybeapercentageofourrevenue.Andrightnow,at$20,000, for our current revenue, it’s actually 14%, which is, like, we could actually spend more.

477 01:00:03.310 ⇒ 01:00:04.399 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I would say.

478 01:00:04.400 ⇒ 01:00:04.720 Luke Scorziell: Okay.

479 01:00:04.720 ⇒ 01:00:22.030 Robert Tseng: probably spend up to 20%. So even if the efficiency is low, it’s at 69%, I would look at that and be like, well, is there a way that we can spend 5% more of our revenue and make that efficiency go up? Like, maybe there’s a way for you, if you just had more money to spend somewhere.

480 01:00:22.030 ⇒ 01:00:32.119 Robert Tseng: That, like, if you just ran a campaign, like a targeted ad campaign that you know is gonna crush it or something, like, sometimes spending more will help the efficiency.

481 01:00:32.410 ⇒ 01:00:48.260 Robert Tseng: That may not always be the case, but I’m saying, like, that’s, like, that could be a possible lever for you. But let’s say we’re already over 20%, and the efficiency is at 69%, yeah, then that’s not gonna work. Like, somebody… that… yeah, something’s… something would… something would have to change.

482 01:00:48.260 ⇒ 01:00:50.870 Luke Scorziell: Which, that’s what you were mentioning about making cuts, right?

483 01:00:50.870 ⇒ 01:01:07.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, something we’ll have to cut, or at that point, because we’re just not running sustainably at that point. But I don’t want to be so reactive, like, I expect that there will be weeks where this won’t be above 1. I just don’t know how much we’re willing to kind of, like, absorb on that.

484 01:01:08.400 ⇒ 01:01:08.780 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

485 01:01:08.780 ⇒ 01:01:26.839 Robert Tseng: been doing it unchecked so far, so I just want to be more disciplined about this. Like, we didn’t really know what… how to measure, like, the week-to-week return on the go-to-market team up to this point. Even this is still experimental, like, I may refine this metric a little bit more, like, I… but, like, I don’t want to look at it anymore today.

486 01:01:26.840 ⇒ 01:01:40.879 Robert Tseng: But yeah, like, I think at least this should get us closer to a conversation where, you know, when you meet with Utam and I, kind of, like, on a weekly basis, and reviewing, like, our funnel health, and I would expect to review this assessment with you, right, and be like.

487 01:01:40.880 ⇒ 01:01:47.629 Robert Tseng: hey, I think we’re… you know, then, like, I would just be looking at this to see what adjustments we need to make.

488 01:01:48.760 ⇒ 01:01:50.180 Luke Scorziell: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

489 01:01:54.590 ⇒ 01:01:58.739 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I think this is making more sense walking together through it, versus,

490 01:01:58.930 ⇒ 01:02:05.510 Luke Scorziell: I think the video was helpful, but just probably been looking at it, and so…

491 01:02:05.760 ⇒ 01:02:10.820 Luke Scorziell: Okay, and that then makes… helps me, too, because then it’s like, obviously the more…

492 01:02:11.510 ⇒ 01:02:15.779 Luke Scorziell: That we’re able to up the, like, monthly recurring revenue from…

493 01:02:16.740 ⇒ 01:02:20.330 Luke Scorziell: The leads and clients that we’re getting, and deals that we’re closing, then we can…

494 01:02:21.100 ⇒ 01:02:24.890 Luke Scorziell: you know, boost the size of the marketing team, or the budget, too.

495 01:02:24.890 ⇒ 01:02:30.580 Robert Tseng: Yeah, or, like, you get more from that as well. Like, it doesn’t always have to be new, you can just take more, so…

496 01:02:30.700 ⇒ 01:02:31.889 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

497 01:02:31.890 ⇒ 01:02:36.260 Luke Scorziell: Okay, well, I’ll… yeah, I’ll work on the…

498 01:02:36.900 ⇒ 01:02:40.240 Luke Scorziell: Just getting a doc or sheet going with,

499 01:02:40.680 ⇒ 01:02:43.269 Luke Scorziell: Content strategy stuff that we can start.

500 01:02:43.580 ⇒ 01:02:49.970 Luke Scorziell: moving along, with Ryan, and then I think, yeah, it’ll probably just be kind of an experimentation of, like.

501 01:02:50.420 ⇒ 01:03:02.480 Luke Scorziell: which problems are landing with people, which ICPs are really hitting, and then from there, I guess what you said, like, honing in on that, and then, you know, the ideal spot with any marketing is that you figure out

502 01:03:02.660 ⇒ 01:03:03.920 Luke Scorziell: the lever that…

503 01:03:04.200 ⇒ 01:03:10.819 Luke Scorziell: like you said, when you spend more, you get more. And so, obviously… obviously, that’s very easy to see more on, like, the paid side.

504 01:03:10.980 ⇒ 01:03:11.940 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

505 01:03:12.120 ⇒ 01:03:15.940 Luke Scorziell: But… You know, ideally, if we can see, like, which…

506 01:03:16.330 ⇒ 01:03:20.350 Luke Scorziell: Which messages and messaging are creating,

507 01:03:21.480 ⇒ 01:03:24.869 Luke Scorziell: Like, the most response, then we can try to double down on…

508 01:03:25.080 ⇒ 01:03:29.090 Luke Scorziell: on those, and then… so, yeah, so maybe I’ll kind of view this current.

509 01:03:29.750 ⇒ 01:03:33.060 Luke Scorziell: stage is, like, Kind of getting stuff out, like.

510 01:03:34.590 ⇒ 01:03:36.729 Luke Scorziell: Like, more like quantity, and then…

511 01:03:36.730 ⇒ 01:03:37.330 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

512 01:03:37.890 ⇒ 01:03:40.580 Luke Scorziell: And then seeing, like, okay, how do we refine from…

513 01:03:41.120 ⇒ 01:03:43.090 Luke Scorziell: From there, and I’ll probably still…

514 01:03:44.780 ⇒ 01:03:50.910 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, maybe checking in with you for more, too, would be helpful, just on, like, the technical side of…

515 01:03:52.010 ⇒ 01:03:57.260 Luke Scorziell: writing the content. It’ll probably take me a little bit to just gear up to where I’m, like, fluent and,

516 01:03:57.620 ⇒ 01:03:59.450 Luke Scorziell: Data and AI.

517 01:03:59.900 ⇒ 01:04:06.520 Robert Tseng: Totally, I mean, now that, you know, assuming we got all the contracts and everything figured out, like, and you’re spending more time, like.

518 01:04:06.800 ⇒ 01:04:13.550 Robert Tseng: you know, assuming you’re full-time, like, I’ll definitely spend more time with you. Like, I… yeah. So, we’ll… we’ll probably talk more regularly, yeah.

519 01:04:14.170 ⇒ 01:04:19.910 Luke Scorziell: Okay, cool, well, yeah, I think that’s super helpful. And,

520 01:04:20.700 ⇒ 01:04:24.939 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, again, super, like, feel very excited, so,

521 01:04:27.470 ⇒ 01:04:30.710 Luke Scorziell: Nice! Yeah, and I don’t think I have…

522 01:04:32.080 ⇒ 01:04:35.889 Luke Scorziell: I’m sure more questions will get… come up as soon as we hop off, but…

523 01:04:36.500 ⇒ 01:04:44.090 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no worries, you can ask questions anytime. I’m gonna go to head to dinner now, but, yeah, I guess we’ll talk more later.

524 01:04:44.730 ⇒ 01:04:46.119 Luke Scorziell: Cool. Alright, thanks, Robert.

525 01:04:46.120 ⇒ 01:04:47.270 Robert Tseng: Okay, talk to you later.

526 01:04:47.430 ⇒ 01:04:48.519 Luke Scorziell: Yep, bye.

527 01:04:48.520 ⇒ 01:04:49.610 Robert Tseng: Happy New Year. Bye.

528 01:04:49.610 ⇒ 01:04:50.470 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, likewise.